Publications

The August 2019 In Practice blog post offers tips for programs to ensure that the participants they recruit, actually enroll. In this post, we examine some key lessons from MDRC’s evaluation of the WorkAdvance project to help turn program recruits into program success stories.

In the spring of 2019, MDRC invited practitioners from innovative career and technical education (CTE) programs to discuss questions of equity. This policy brief summarizes the most common equity challenges that were raised in the discussion, along with ideas that emerged for how to address them.

A change in state law presents an opportunity for organizations to access administrative wage data to help evaluate and improve their workforce programs. This guide, based on lessons from the Change Capital Fund economic mobility initiative, explains some of the challenges involved and offers practical advice for interested community organizations.

This first national randomized controlled trial of the Family Self-Sufficiency (FSS) program — the main federal strategy to help housing voucher recipients make progress toward economic mobility — examined program implementation, participants’ engagement, and impacts on labor force participation and benefits receipt in the first 24 months of this five-year program.

Community organizations are at the center of neighborhood improvement efforts. But how do organizational networks evolve over time, and how does their evolution affect local capacity for positive change? This report takes on these questions to advance an understanding of how community networks function, and how to better support them.

Lessons from the New York City Change Capital Fund’s Economic Mobility Initiative (2014-2018)

September, 2018

A group of 17 donors are collaborating to provide multiyear funding to help community organizations build data capacity and integrate services — an uncommon opportunity. This report reviews the progress made among the first round of grantees and considers lessons involving donor expectations, technical assistance, and stakeholder involvement.

The NYC Change Capital Fund is a formal consortium of donors investing in community organizations with the dual objective of helping build their data capacity and encouraging ambitious program goals. This brief offers insights on the effective operation of a donor collaborative, from managing democratic governance to setting clear expectations.

This report presents implementation and interim impact findings from a random assignment evaluation of STEP Forward, a subsidized employment program in San Francisco serving a diverse group of low-income job seekers. In the first year, STEP Forward boosted employment and earnings, which suggests that participants obtained better jobs.

This report presents findings from the Chicago Community Networks study — one of the most extensive efforts to measure interorganizational partnerships in local neighborhoods. It uses social network analysis and extensive field research to ask how specific patterns of partnership promote better-implemented collaborations that, in turn, can inform public policy.